Thursday, March 13, 2014

Organic Mousse

There are some kinds of facts which are a dead end.  Yes, they're useful to know and they assist us in various ways but that's it, there isn't any further we can go.  Then there is the other kind of facts, those facts which, upon learning them, promote more questions.  "Miranda Kerr's mother sells organic tooth mousse" is such a fact.  With that simple statement several fruitful lines of enquiry are immediately opened such as "What the hell is organic tooth mousse?", "Who on earth would buy such a product?" and (in my case) "Who is Miranda Kerr?"

Organic tooth mousse it turns out is a rather clever way of charging people $20 for a tube of toothpaste.  But its got to be better than mere toothpaste because it is a) mousse and b) organic.  How wonderful is that.  Until you look at the ingredients list.  True most of the things mentioned are definitely organic even if you're probably more used to seeing most of them in essential oils or even herbal tea but the active ingredient (as it is with most toothpastes) is sodium bicarbonate.  If I remember my high school chemistry sodium bicarbonate isn't organic at all.  As a matter of fact I think the technical term is "inorganic".  The website selling the stuff attempts to skate over this by claiming it is "traditional sodium bicarbonate" as opposed to that modern sodium bicarbonate crap that's probably made in China and tested on animals or political prisoners (as a sidebar I wonder which would upset the purchasers more?).

What organic tooth mousse proves is that first some people will buy anything and secondly that there is always somebody who is willing to sell it to them.  Lest we get too cocky about our perceived superiority to such people allow me to remind everyone that our entire economy basically consists of spending money we don't have to buy crap we don't need.  Anybody who has a problem with that is certainly a communist and probably an environmentalist into the bargain.  Neither are famous for being able to run an economy.

I did wonder about calling it "mousse".  Of course just calling it toothpaste would let the cat out of the bag but one can easily (very easily actually) imagine the sort of people who would buy such a thing putting it in their hair by mistake.  I admit that when I hear the word mousse I think of something I can put in my hair (or possibly mount on my wall).  Then I realised it was a stroke of genius.  What they should really do now is remove the word "tooth" and let the customers put the stuff where they like.  I don't know what sodium bicarbonate does to the hair but the rest of the ingredients are pretty harmless and when you think about it $20 may be a bit of a steep price for a toothpaste but its not bad for a decent hair styling product.

If they marketed the product as simply "organic mousse" the customer could decide where to put it; on their teeth, in their hair, under the armpits.  Possibly they could smear it all over their body for that desirable silky skin (that's still desirable right? Or am I thinking of terriers?).  The applications are endless and with any luck the applications will be endless.

Which just leaves Miranda Kerr.  According to various pitying females at work Miranda Kerr is a model (of what wasn't specified) and furthermore she is a Victoria Secret's Angel.  As near as I can determine Victoria Secret's Angels are rather like Charlie's Angels only with less emphasis on crime fighting and more on hanging around in underwear with a pair of wings strapped to their back.  In defence of this as a career I should point out that its an indoor job with no heavy lifting.

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